SPring-8, the large synchrotron radiation facility

The research group led by Assistant Professor Masaaki Miyahara and Professor Eiji Ohtani of the Department of Earth Science, Graduate School of Science and Faculty of Science at Tohoku University, in cooperation with Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI), Hiroshima University and Okayama University of Science has discovered ultra-high polymorph of silica (seifertite) formed only at very high pressure environment in a fallen lunar meteorite. This seifertite was formed when asteroid collided on the lunar surface 2.7 billion years ago. Ultra-high pressure environments of 400,000 atmospheric pressures at least were produced on the lunar surface. Countless intense concentrations of asteroid collisions occurring approximately 38-41 million years ago has been theorized in the past and these findings point to the possibility of the collisions occurring up till 2.7 billion years ago. It is also possible that this intense asteroid collision occurred on the Earth, located adjacent to the moon, and affected the primitive biosphere of the Earth which was beginning to evolve. The results of this study have been published online in the British scientific journal Nature Communications on April 24th (Japan time). The paper's title is "Discovery of seifertite in a shocked lunar meteorite."

Publication:
"Discovery of seifertite in a shocked lunar meteorite"
M. MIYAHARA, S. KANEKO, E. OHTANI, T. SAKAI, T. NAGASE, M. KAYAMA, H. NISHIDO and N. HIRAO
Nature Communications 4, (2013)